“Come on, we must hurry,” he told her, taking off at a fast pace, pulling her along with him as he raced into the thick of the panic.
They passed women with crying, scared children and frightened old folk heading as fast as they could in the opposite direction, all desperate to escape the smoke and the black ashy rain falling all around them.
The closer they got to the center of the panic, the louder the shouts and screams became, and the frenzied barking of roaming dogs only added to the din. Over the top of it all, he could hear a low, constant roaring and the cracking and shrieking of timber shrinking in the heat of flames.
Everything joined in a discordant cacophony that was almost deafening. Shouting was the only way to make oneself heard.
As they reached the edges of the milling crowd, he skidded to a halt and grabbed a passing man by the shoulder. “What’s burnin’?” he shouted to him over the ear-splitting racket.
“’Tis the barn where most of the grain is stored, Me Laird,” the man replied, hacking loudly and pointing towards the end of the main street.
With his worst fears confirmed, Edan took off running again, the panicking people parting like the Red Sea before him when they realized the Laird and his lady had come to help them.
“This is bad,” he shouted to Olivia, who was valiantly running alongside him, hanging onto his hand to keep up with him. “There’s likely a whole year’s worth of grain stored in that barn. There are strict rules about usin’ fire in the grain store, so how the hell could it catch fire?”
“I dinnae ken, but it sounds suspicious to me,” she yelled back, panting behind the kerchief.
Nobody looked twice at his scars as he and Olivia finally pushed their way to the front of the frenzied group of men who were trying to extinguish the fire.
“Ach, it looks bad, Edan,” Olivia choked out as they stood side by side and surveyed the burning building.
Edan’s heart sank to see the fountain of smoke and ash billowing out through the doors and windows of the great timber buildingand rising to the sky above them. Orange flames had already consumed part of the thatched roof and were licking across the rest like the tongues of hungry devils bent on consuming everything in their path.
The smoke and ash were starting to affect him too, and he began coughing. “We must act fast. If it goes on like this for much longer, it’ll soon be impossible to get anywhere near the barn because of the amount of smoke and ash.”
“Aye, and a whole year’s worth of grain will be lost!” Olivia exclaimed in dismay.
Edan looked around and noticed that the men trying to put out the fire were disorganized and uncoordinated. It was his duty to remedy that, and fast. But first, he asked some of the men if they knew how the fire had started.
“We’re nae sure, Me Laird. The first any of us kenned of it was when we smelled burnin’ wood and saw the smoke comin’ from the roof,” one soot-blackened fellow answered.
“Aye, and when we came runnin’, we could see it was the thatch that was burnin’,” another man added. “But how it started there, I cannae say. It must have been done deliberately.”
Edan’s suspicions rushed back, and anger gripped him. Just then, a woman holding a boy of about twelve by the arm ran up to them.
“Me Laird!” she cried. “Me Colin here says he saw a man runnin’ away just before the fire started.” She pushed the boy forward, adding, “Tell the Laird, Colin.”
“What did ye see, lad?” Edan asked him, almost certain now that he knew who was responsible for starting the fire.
The nervous boy avoided looking at his face, and his voice shook as he stuttered, “I didnae recognize him, but he had a bow over his shoulder. He ran off into the woods over there.” He pointed into the distance, to the fields and woods behind the barn.
Nurkirk!It has to be him.
Edan reached into his pocket and gave the boy a penny.“Good lad,” he told him and sent him off with his mother.
He and Olivia exchanged a meaningful glance, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Sounds like it was started deliberately by this mystery bowman—probably a burnin’ arrow fired at the roof,” he told the men. “Do any of ye ken why he might have done it?”
“Nay, Me Laird, but it seems too much of a coincidence that this should happen just after our crops were destroyed,” the first man said.
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group.
“Aye, it does. I’ll get to the bottom of it, and whoever’s responsible will be stopped and punished,” Edan promised them. “But now we have to work hard to put out the fire if we’re goin’ to save all that grain.”
He stripped off his coat and threw it over a nearby sawhorse, then began rolling up his sleeves. “Stay here and keep back from the fire,” he ordered Olivia, not giving her time to argue before he plunged into the thick of the men and started shouting commands.
“Ye lot there, gather all the buckets and form chains to bring water from the pond to here. Now!” he yelled at one group, sending them running. “All of ye with ladders, come over here and team up with those with rakes. Ye can work as teams, one holdin’ the ladders and the other usin’ the rakes to pull down as much of the burning thatch as ye can,” he yelled above the roar of the flames, pointing to the burning section of the roof. The men hastened to obey.
